


Matter

by canonismybitch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Author is not a doctor, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fluff, Gift Fic, Gun Violence, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, In this house we love and respect Mr. Harrington, Interwebs isn't the focus but I love my babies, IronDad and SpiderSon, Medical Inaccuracies, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Panic Attacks, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter gets shot but he's used to it, Police Brutality, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Protests, The AcaDeca Team gets along well, The Platypus Plushie, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Cuddles, Tony Stark Has A Heart, even though he's mentioned like two times, well one gun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25230610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canonismybitch/pseuds/canonismybitch
Summary: Peter and the AcaDeca team go to a protest in the streets of New York.At least, that was the plan before a policeman stopped them.
Relationships: Academic Decathlon Team (Spider-Man: Homecoming) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Ned Leeds/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 18
Kudos: 427
Collections: Peter Parker's Tales, The Friendly Neighborhood Exchange, ellie marvel fics - read





	Matter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DancingInTheSliverGlow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DancingInTheSliverGlow/gifts).



> GUESS WHO’S YOUR OFF-HOLIDAYS SECRET SANTA! ME! Honestly, when I got my giftee (and the prompts omg) I was so excited to write for you! I hope you like it!
> 
> Prompts were: 1) Peter using his white male privileges to help out African Americans/other groups with discrimination (without the mask/suit on) 2) Peter using the iron man gauntlet in front of his midtown peers/friends 3) Tony does something (not bad/incriminating) and it triggers Peter, so he comforts Peter (iron dad cuddles?) with a bonus of Protective Peter or Tony.
> 
> I’ve taken all your prompts and tweaked them a little bit, but I really hope you like the outcome!  
> To all of my readers, before you begin with the story: While I am a person of color, I am not black, and I wanted to focus this story on the Black Lives Matter movement. Your lives don’t just matter, they are important, they are beautiful, they are a gift, my heart is with all of you and I protest alongside you in the only way I can think of.
> 
> Trigger warnings in this story: Police brutality, guns, and panic attacks. Take care of your mental health and click that back button if you need to.

They had agreed to meet outside the school’s parking lot after breakfast. A little early, but, y’know, they had to finish making their signs.

Cindy and Sally had come armed with a bunch of black facemasks. MJ had brought an impressive amount of paint, considering that _capitalism made everything expensive and I’m a student with no part-time job_. At first, it had been her (self-appointed) job to paint the bunch of T-Shirts Mr. Harrington had gotten for them, but she had forced everyone to help.

[They had _no_ artistic talent whatsoever, that much was clear. MJ still smiled encouragingly at them whenever they showed off their finished work; it made Peter think about how good a captain she really was.]

Abe, Charles, and Flash surprised them with backpacks filled to the brim with snacks and some peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, coupled with some Nature Valley granola bars. 

Ned and Peter had been in charge of the water bottles and first-aid kits (courtesy of Stark Tower and Tony himself). Both Cho and Pepper had made them stock up in everything they might need, from band-aids to bandages, baby wipes, and frighteningly, some needles and thread, along with a tourniquet that everyone eyed warily but still had learned how to use.

* * *

They had finished all their signs and T-shirts a little after all the sandwiches were gone, and everyone kept finding stray bits of granola bar inside their clothes (how they got there, no one knew. Abe and Flash were too happy about it to be completely innocent, though the others had no proof).

[Yet.]

The parking lot had a few stray paint splatters (that no one was really guilty about), courtesy of their lack of care, newspapers, and plastic film. If you were to ask Peter, he’d tell you that it gave Midtown personality and the bit of teenager-ness it needed.

The whole Decathlon team made their way to the nearest subway station as a group, their plan was to meet a bigger group of people at the protest and had agreed on one of the many stations around New York.

They didn’t make it further than five blocks before a policeman stopped them on their tracks.

* * *

The guy has his hand discretely hovering over his gun and Peter’s senses are screaming at him. His sensitive ears pick up his team’s elevated heart rate and their frightened puffs of breath. Ned’s (sweaty, oh Thor _so_ sweaty) hand finds his own. It’s shaking so bad Peter has half a mind to check on his boyfriend. 

The other half of his mind made him stand straight and move in front of Ned, MJ, Abe, and Cindy. His hands instinctively felt for his wrist bands that transformed into web-shooters with a touch of his fingers; but his wrists were unbelievably ( _terrifyingly_ ) bare.

The policeman eyed their signs warily. His hand grasped the gun tightly. 

Peter stepped up.

“We don’t want any problems, officer. We’re just passing.” he glared at the man. The guy didn’t listen.

“Drop the signs.” No one listened to him.

The officer took out his gun.

“I said, drop the signs!”

He pointed at them, his finger steady over the trigger.

They leave everything on the ground.

* * *

He makes them stand against a wall of some store. Peter’s fingers right on top of an old leather-bound notebook on display.

Their hands –shaking, sweaty, gripping thin air– rest on the cold glass. The policeman’s reflection visible in it, like some kind of impromptu mirror no one really wanted, but nevertheless were grateful for.

They have a clear view of the guy pointing his gun at Abe. Sure, his eyes fluttered like nervous butterflies between all of them, but his aim never left him. Peter wanted to cry. 

The cop stepped closer to his classmate, his gun never faltering. He nodded his head towards the police car, a clear invitation (if it could even be called that, with the gun and all) to go inside.

From the corner of his eyes, Peter could see Abe, shaking from head to toe. He was crying as silently as he could, and Peter didn’t need his super-hearing to know that the rest of his team was crying too.

The policeman wasn’t getting any more patient, and as Abe made his way slowly to the parked police car, the gun on the man’s hand pointed at MJ to follow him inside.

In all the time that he had known MJ, Peter had never seen her as scared as she was now. Though, maybe scared wasn’t the right word. Her shoulders shook with sobs –same as everyone in the team– but her hands were pulled into tight fists that trembled with the force of her rage.

She wasn’t just scared.

She was furious.

[Everyone on the team was.]

Peter watched in horror as Abe and MJ made their way to the car, closer and closer to the door.

Closer and closer to a police station, if they were lucky.

Closer to a cold case and forgotten papers on an abandoned cardboard box, hoarding dust and loved one’s tears.

Peter panicked.

He turned around in what felt like slow motion, but couldn’t have been more than half a second.

[Terrifyingly, the policeman turned too.]

Peter raised his hand, and let the nanites from the Iron Man gauntlet he had been fixing flow until they covered everything from his fingers to his forearm. The repulsor glowing with energy.

He had been going to say something intelligent, probably _Let them go!_ or maybe _Have you really been pointing your gun at minors?_ . If he had been feeling especially sassy, he would’ve gone with _Yeah, I may have forgotten to mention that we’re a group of nerds, but we’re pretty cool. See, I work for Tony Stark._

However, Peter didn’t get to say any of those things.

Because the policeman fired his gun.

* * *

No matter how often he had gotten shot, it always hurt like hell.

Peter felt as if his whole torso was on fire (and he _could_ make that comparison, it had happened once). Somehow, Parker Luck had left him a small mercy and instead of smashing his nose on the sidewalk, he had staggered back to lean into the display.

Iron Man gauntlet still high (if a little off track, pointing at the car instead of the man that _had just shot him, oh Thor, that was a bullet somewhere on his body-!)_

His ears felt full of cotton, like that one time that he had fallen onto some river or another and water had made his eardrums its home. Everything he heard was either very far away, or he was _really disoriented_.

He was gonna go with the second one.

Still, he could hear some things, mainly one stuttering voice he distinctly remembered calling him “Penis” earlier that morning.

“T-this is live on Instagram! Everyone will know that it was you!”

Another voice joined his bully’s.

“And we’re just minors! How’re you gonna deal with _that_ _?_ ”

His cotton-filled ears picked up on the sound of footsteps, and he prayed to all the gods that Loki had taught him that the cop wasn’t advancing towards his team.

“You and your car are on video!”

His senses picked up on the faint clattering of metal against cement, a car door closing way-too-forcefully, and a police siren that grew more distant by the second.

And then– 

“Oh _God_ , that’s a lot of blood.”

* * *

Ned had seen his fair share of gunshot wounds, and this one was no different: a bullet from a military-issued gun (which, frankly, was one of the tame ones compared to the stuff some bad guys liked to carry around), went into the right side of Peter’s torso, probably caught in-between two ribs. 

Didn’t hit anything fatal judging by the fact that Peter was still conscious. 

All in all: not Peter’s worst injury.

He and MJ got to work right away. Ned ran for the various first-aid kits that had fallen to the ground alongside their signs while MJ made her way to Peter, checking his vitals (Ned distinctly noted that she had to check his pulse twice because her hands shook too much. He made a mental note to give her a hug she would most definitely deny needing later.)

[He ignored the way that his own hands fumbled with the bandages and sewing kit on his arms, he couldn’t afford to do this when Peter was bleeding a few feet away from him. Not again.]

Everything was quiet, abnormally so for a street in New York at almost 1 pm, the only thing that his ears could pick up was Peter’s elaborate breathing and his pained groans whenever MJ moved him.

And then– 

“Dude, Mr. Harrington is going to kill us! He literally just said to not get shot!”

The situation was absolute madness. Ned couldn’t help but laugh.

“Flash, Peter just got shot! And you’re worried about that?! What the hell, man?”

“Well, what do you want me to do, Cindy?! I don’t know how to treat a freaking bullet!”

“Then call 9-1-1!”

Peter tried to stand up from his place on the sidewalk, MJ frantically pushing him back by the shoulders.

“Nope! No 9-1-1, no ambulance, and certainly no hospitals! I’ll be fine guys!”

“You were _shot!_ ”

Yeah, Ned couldn’t even tell who had said that last bit, everyone had shouted at the same time. 

It was nice, to know that they all cared about Peter.

[A part of him knew that they would’ve cared just as much for any other person with a gunshot wound. He shooed that little part into a small box and hid it on the back of his mind.]

Ned makes his way back to Peter’s side, bandages, and a sewing kit in his (trembling, _why were they trembling_ ) hands.

“He _really_ will be fine, guys… Besides, Peter can’t go to a hospital.”

“And why the hell not, Ned?! I don’t think that you and MJ are really grasping what happened. A cop pointed his gun at us, Peter tried to save our asses with a _fucking Iron Man gauntlet, don’t think we’re not gonna talk about that later, Parker_ , and then gets shot!”

MJ chuckles, disinfecting the wound [flinching when Peter hissed in pain] and cleaning the edges with rubbing alcohol and some cotton balls.

“Trust me, this isn’t the worst thing he’s done. And Ned’s right, he can’t go to a hospital”– at the team’s raised eyebrows, she elaborated– “His body can’t handle the anesthesia, it doesn’t work on him.”

 _So we’re gonna get the bullet out with a pair of tweezers and hope for the best_ , Ned completed in his mind.

The team looked pretty subdued after that, staring at Peter as he and MJ moved through the motions of extracting the offending piece of metal with practiced ease.

Flash pancake-ed on the sidewalk, like a puppet that had just gotten its strings cut.

“So… who do we call then?”

“No one. Not yet.”

Everyone went back to deadly quiet after that. A car honked in the distance while Ned got the tweezers properly sanitized.

Peter grabbed onto MJ’s jean jacket, focusing on the glittery stars that she had painted on it during one of their Chemistry study sessions. He grit his teeth, used to the feeling of the tweezers moving inside his flesh until they managed to bump into something solid (that was not bone).

Every single thing eerily quiet.

“...Not even Mr. Harrington?”

* * *

After Peter’s torso has been properly bandaged up and there’s a whole bullet (and thank Loki and Thor that it’s a whole one) lying innocently on a piece of gauze, the vigilante manages to get up on his own two feet. His wound –unbeknownst to the team– already closing.

The spiderling walks carefully to the pile of signs they had dropped an hour or so ago, and nudges one with his left foot. His puppy dog eyes make an appearance as he tries to bend to pick up the abandoned wood.

Obviously, everyone stares at him (with a look that would make May proud) and he stops like a deer caught in the headlights.

And then (because he’s adorable like that) he shuffles his feet and pouts like a little kid.

[He’s _pretty_ sure Cindy _awww-ed_ at him, but he fears her too much to actually say it.]

“Peter, what do you think you’re doing? Moving around like that, you need to get checked out!”

“I just…”–Peter looks down at the bunch of painted signs and backpacks filled with water and granola bars– “What just happened… the way I see it, it gives us all the more reasons to go to the protest, but I don’t want to ask you to do that…”

No one talked for a few seconds.

Peter’s feet kept nudging the signs on the floor.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Parker.”

* * *

They ended up going to the protest, but only after they made Peter promise that he’d get his wound checked and they had all walked him to the nearest subway station.

(He made them promise to check-in on the group chat every fifteen minutes, and to call him if they ran into any trouble.)

[How would the kid that just got shot be of any help in a dangerous situation, they had no idea.]

* * *

 **parkour:** 5 minute walk to the tower!

 **Im_in:** u better get that looked at

 **parkour:** aye aye cap

 **Mr. Roger:** Get _what_ checked out, Peter?

**_parkour is typing…_ **

* * *

FRIDAY greets him as soon as he enters the Tower through the back door.

“Good afternoon, Peter. My scanners are detecting that you have sustained a wound in your torso. I am unable to get further information, so I recommend that you go to the medbay. Boss will be informed as soon as his meeting is over.”

Peter smiled at one of the many cameras on the ceiling.

“Thanks, FRI. I will.”

He steps inside the elevator and doesn’t even need to tell the AI where to go before the _huge metal box oh Thor_ is making its way to floor 18.

In Peter’s mind, they were moving way too slow, and he had half a second to panic because _what if the elevator stops and I get stuck in here, dear Thor please save me_ ; and then the doors opened to let him out on the floor that served as a glorified hospital.

One of the nurses noticed him right away.

“Peter? What’s wrong, honey? Weren’t you out for the day?”

Peter loved Jo –she was his favorite nurse (and the only one that agreed to sneak him apple juice and peanut butter sandwiches). She had been an intern at the hospital that May worked at, and later had been hired by Dr. Cho to work for Tony at the Tower. 

Needless to say, she was incredibly smart and Peter enjoyed it when he could talk to her.

[Even when he was in a hospital bed and with enough pain killers to sedate Captain America pumping through an IV on his wrist.]

“Hey, Jo! I...uh, may have gotten shot?” he tried to rub the back of his neck to avoid looking at her, but his efforts were futile. Quick as lighting, Jo grasped his shoulders softly, examining him for any visible injuries and clicking her tongue when she noticed the bandages on his chest.

She dragged him to an empty examination room and made him lie down on the bed after taking off the jacket his team had made him wear (may his shirt rest in peace, Ned had cut through it with scissors to treat his wound).

“Well, I have to admit that Ned and MJ did a good job with these bandages. That first-aid course I made you all take really worked. Care to tell me what happened?”

Peter opened his mouth, his throat vibrating with the ghost of a sound before closing.

Policeman. The gun. Abe and MJ. His team.

He had been _so_ _scared_.

Peter’s breathing started to get faster and faster; he could faintly hear Jo’s voice coaching him through breathing exercises that he couldn’t follow.

He lost track of time, he just knew that his chest hurt, and not just because of his wound. Breathing was hard, and even though he logically knew that the room was big and with enough air going around, it just _wouldn’t go into his lungs_ -!

A calloused hand ran through his hair, while another guided his head to a firm chest. Peter could feel scar tissue beneath the soft cotton of a shirt. His nose picked up on the very faint smell of motor oil and cologne.

_Tony._

His ears picked up on an arrhythmic heartbeat. Dizziness got a hold of him as his head moved up and down with his mentor’s exaggerated breathing.

“In… and out. Can you do that for me, Pete?”

_Could he?_

“That’s it. You’re doing great, _tesoro_. Keep going.”

Gradually, Peter focused on Tony’s work shirt. A white one that was so worn some of the cotton fibers were visible to the naked eye. It tickled his nose if he moved.

Breathing still hurt.

“T-Tony?”

His mentor hushed him.

“It’s alright, Pete. Concentrate on breathing for now, don’t talk. I’ve got you.”

Slowly, Peter managed to take a couple of deep breaths.

His wound stung –because he _had been shot-!_

Peter hadn’t even noticed that his eyes were tightly shut until he opened them.

He was lying on a comfy hospital bed. Tony was right there with him, hugging him as if Peter was his teddy bear –mindful of his healing wound.

Tony’s goatee scratched his forehead when he tried to move his head.

“Hey there, Pete. I missed your bambi eyes.”

Peter smiled at his mentor’s own smile. It made the wrinkles around his eyes even more visible, it reminded Peter of sitting in Santa’s lap as a kid. They both had the same wrinkles.

“You’re okay, spider-baby. I’ve got you.”

Tony’s arms tightened around Peter.

He felt his eyes burn with tears, and blinked desperately to shoo them away.

A sob tore out of his throat before he could stop it.

“Mr. Stark, _I was so scared_ -!”

* * *

His phone chimes with texts every fifteen minutes. The last ones every five. The sun’s setting behind New York’s skyline.

 **b-abe:** just got home!

 **im_in:** im almost home too

 **MJ:** My mom is meeting me at the bookstore, I’m already here.

 **fastest_man:** almost at my stop, I’ll tell u guys when I get home

 **salt_n_peppa:** me and cindy are almost home, she’s sleeping over

 **moony:** and don’t think that we’re not talking about the shit u pulled with the ironman gauntlet @parkour

Peter smiled at Tony’s snores, the man fast asleep on the sofa by his hospital bed (where he had been promptly tossed by Jo, who stated that ‘Peter didn’t need his bony elbows to keep him from sleep’), and grabbed his phone from its place charging on the table beside him. He snapped a quick picture of his mentor snuggling the platypus plushie Rhodey had gotten him not too long ago. He sent it to the Tower’s group chat, before opening his team’s messages. 

**parkour:** ;)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr! @canonismybitch


End file.
